


sing us a song, you're the piano man

by jojosiewa



Series: MCYT Short Stories [5]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), NewScapePro's Minecraft Fallout Series
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV First Person, Short, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 09:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18914575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojosiewa/pseuds/jojosiewa
Summary: son can you play me a memory,i'm not really sure how it goes.but it's sad and it's sweet and i knew it complete,when i wore a younger man's clothes.piano man - billy joel





	sing us a song, you're the piano man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [craftingdead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/gifts).



> Meena Lynx belongs to @craftingdead  
> last name Lynx belongs to @craftingdead
> 
> [this is my fallout discord!](https://discord.gg/8ctKDY6) please join i will literally cry, it's so fun and creative (and hellish.)!

I can play the piano. I don’t think many people know that about me, because I’m hesitant to say it. I know my image. I’m a ghoul, I’m a big guy, I’m a trigger happy motherfucker named Adam Rodriguez who’s lived for longer than anyone should live and who’s killed more than anyone should kill and who’s wondered when it’ll be his time. Does that sounds like a piano kind of guy?

I also don’t tell anyone I play the piano because I treasure the specialness of Tommy Valentine, a boy so dear to me I kept his hat all these years and hesitated to tell anyone too much about him in fear of losing that special feeling I get when I think about him, just him and me and the rest of the world can go fuck itself. He taught me piano, and he’s long gone now but he’ll always be in my heart and all that cheesy shit he probably would have appreciated. Tommy Valentine was always a secret and it feels weird to talk about him. But one day I did, because Cory and Nick and Uni and Dawn are my family, and I eventually realized I could tell them everything, not just the surface level bullshit I spout to make it seem like I’m an open book. When I said how he died they were all quiet, awkward. They said their sorrys and I told them it was okay, it was a very long time ago, no use to fret over it any longer. Tommy’s in heaven.

“I play piano,” I said next, and it lightened the mood. Then on Valentine’s Day, my birthday, Cory and Nick got me an old musical keyboard they’d fixed up, with Dawn’s help. There was a name written on the bottom in permanent marker, it was Sam. I liked the gift very much, and I made sure to give the boys noogies and half-hugs galore and not bug them as much. That night I stayed up to play it, the volume turned down, hidden under the covers with a lantern like I was young again. I played Hey Jude by the Beatles. I remember liking that band back in the day. I heard they were on drugs, and I was too, so it provided a backwards sense of validation.

\----

I knew Sky briefly, before the fallout. He’s one of those immortal folks, like Cory, who stopped aging due to radiation, like ghouls, but fortunately didn’t get their skin all rotted. But something else always happens. For Cory it was his face and for Sky it was his eyes, they glowed yellow and were sensitive to sunlight, hence the sunglasses.

All I had was a one night stand with Sky, but I really wanted more, I liked him and he liked me too. But I was too afraid; it was too soon after Tommy died and I didn’t have the strength. I had a best friend named Meena Lynx who always bugged me for that. She said she wanted me to be happy. She had heterochromia, one blue eye and one yellow eye. She left when my addiction got really bad and I turned into an asshole who treated her god awful. I haven’t seen her in so long. I never said sorry.

\----

I think about Sam sometimes. Was Sam short for Samantha or Samuel or neither? Were they a kid? How were their parents? Were they in a happy family? Or maybe they lived post-fallout. Their story might have been a lot sadder then. Maybe not. Anyone’s story can be sad, whether the world ended or not, I guess. I wonder if Sam is still alive. I wonder if they miss their keyboard.

I miss a lot of things. I miss big cities and I miss being the paperboy riding on my bike with the peace sign sticker and I miss swing music and I miss tie dye and I miss Meena’s attitude and I miss having money and I miss Tommy’s cute little laugh and I miss having hopeless crushes and I miss my sister Josefina’s conversations and I miss protesting and I miss my friend Chase’s small and big acts of rebellion alike and I guess I just miss the past, which makes sense. But now I have new things. I have the open air and I have dips in the lake and I have fishing and I have Uni’s cuddles and I have the faint sounds of Cory’s lense widening and dilating and I have Nick’s half-serious-half-joking talks late at night when we know no one else is listening and I have faith and I have the sun and I have Dawn’s cooking and I have a family again. An odd one, but family nonetheless.

\----

“Love you guys,” Cory once said before we all retreated to our rooms. I smiled and said it back because I meant it, and he gave me a hug. It’s hard to remember he’s just a kid sometimes. He feels so mentally old and it hurts my heart.

\----

When I got to my room that night Uni sat with me and watched me play Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis. I said the words too, softly, not really singing, because I couldn’t sing for shit. He told me the song reminded him of Cory and Nick, how they wanted to hate each other but couldn’t.

“That’s how love works sometimes,” I said, and for some reason I thought of Sky. I still don’t know why.

\----

Nick’s long lost dad he never knew is Sky, backwards as it sounds. Sky confessed it before he left, he told me and I told Nick and Nick got all stuttery and didn’t talk for a while. Then Sky died and it happened all over again but worse. I’ve always felt bad for the kid. His own father, there for a fleeting moment after nearly two decades and then gone again.

Nick has heterochromia, one yellow eye, one green. His last name is Lynx, or at least that’s what he says. Meena liked Sky way back when we all knew each other, it was obvious. How much of a stretch would it be if she and him both survived after the bombs and found each other again? I knew the way Nick smiled was familiar.

It really sucks that I know Meena is dead. Sometimes I wish I didn’t.

\----

I hope heaven is real. It seems like it shouldn’t be, sometimes, along with the whole concept of religion. I struggled for a long time with that, I could talk in length about my personal relationship with God, but I won’t. I believe in Him, I grew up Catholic, it was really hard not to. I don’t think he’s perfect, like everyone says. I think he’s done bad things, and I don’t know if I forgive him or not. But it’s just really nice to believe in heaven. To believe that everyone I ever loved is (hopefully; Chase is pushing it) there and happy. Maybe one day when I’m there I’ll see Tommy and he’ll slap me at first for all the things I’ve done, but then he’ll hug me and call me brave. Then I’ll see Meena and she’ll hit me too, maybe a punch in the gut. She’ll ring my neck and yell but then she’ll calm down and come around eventually, hopefully. Then I’ll see Sky, and, and I don’t know. I didn’t know the guy, why do I keep thinking about him in heaven? Was his switch enough to redeem him in the eyes of God? I hope so. I want to see him again someday.

\----

I’ve done a lot of bad things. I’ve killed and I’ve burned and I’ve turned a blind eye, which to me seems like the worst of it all. I was in a gang, and they did all kinds of truly vicious things, and I pretended not to know because it was too revolting to even process, not that that’s an excuse. But everyone has a point where they’ve had enough, where they can’t let it go on any longer. For me, that was after I ran away from Cory and the rest of them for the first time, on the snowy mountain.

I ran back down, checking all my corners and tripping in the snow and trying not to cry because I’d been alone before and I could be alone again, goddammit. And then I thought, I always did this. I always ran from my friends. I ran from Sky and Meena and my brother and everyone who challenged me and my high fucking horse.

I was alone for a couple days until I saw my old gang again. BJ (short for Benny John), a redneck from West Virginia and Hannaday, or Hanny (his first name was Thomas but I shut that down real quick), a drunk from like, Wyoming or something. They were both ghouls and they got it a little worse than me in that regard. I feel little sympathy, looking back. They were assholes. More than assholes, they were monsters.

When they saw me, they only laughed. BJ raised his gun but Hanny put a hand on his shoulder. “Adam fucking Rodriguez!” Hanny said, his hazel eyes wide, and before I knew it I was walking with them, confused, disoriented, exhausted. They were being nice, which was weird, since they shot me and left me for dead last time we saw each other. They gave me food and I didn’t tell them anything, I just stayed with them as they continued their unholy quest to find a town to loot. They’d heard word of some underground city, not quite vault dwellers but something bigger. They wanted a piece of it. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t bring myself to. I couldn’t bear to be alone but I didn’t want to admit it. I pretended to be tough.

On the way we made a stop to camp, because Hanny had gotten too drunk to do more than crawl around and say obscene things, and not the funny kind. The alcohol they had piled in their backpacks was so tempting that my body twitched with want, but I managed to hold fast by pretending to sleep, facing away from the campfire and their howling laughter and reminiscing. That’s when I heard it.

“ARod wasn’t there, but I swear to God my favorite raid was that little place, uhh, Goldeye, the place that used to be a miner’s town and has all the old houses that people lived in. Nowhere to run, haha!” BJ said. I wanted to throw up. Don’t fucking call me ARod, I thought.

“Ohhhh yeah! And there was that family there, with the baby?” My eyes widened and I strained my ears to listen.

“Yeah man, and the dad guy, the one with the golden eyes, he was Mexican or something. Long hair, real hippie-lookin’ dude. His dumbass girlfriend too, who tried to fight us off. Two different colored eyes on her.” I held my breath and became aware of my gun laying next to me. “God, they were screaming each other’s names while we were stealing their shit, it’s burned in my brain they were screeching. Finally I killed the girl, just to shut her up. She didn’t have to die y’know, if she weren’t so loud. Spared the dad and the kid, I was in a good mood.”

“What were their names?” I stared ahead and grabbed my gun.

“Ugh, Sky and Meena.”

I swung around and shot them both in the head, bang bang and they were dead, just like that, and I still don’t regret it.

I went to the underground city myself, where Cory and that group took me in again. I still haven’t told Nick what I did.

\----

Nick wanted to know how to play the piano, but of course he only asked me super late at night when no one else could see he was interested in such things. I took him out in the backyard, and I taught him all the keys and eventually he was able to really slowly and shakily play the chorus to Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond. After our ten billionth time saying “sweeet Caroliine, bum bum bum,” I couldn’t take the secrecy anymore.

“I knew your mom, way back when,” I said. “I know you know I knew Sky briefly, and all that, but, I knew your mom, she was my best friend.” I looked at Nick and his eyes were wide.

“Are you serious?” he mumbled, and I nodded. “Adam, why didn’t you tell me?” There was betrayal in those familiar eyes and I felt awful.

“I was scared, alright? Scared because, because Sky had died and I didn’t wanna hurt you any more than you were already hurt,” I said, and Nick only looked at me weird.

“I wouldn’t be sad, Adam, if I knew who my mom was, maybe I could, maybe I could find her!” Nick said, like he already knew the truth. As I opened my mouth he just shook his head. “Don’t.” He got up, dropping the keyboard on the ground, and walked back inside. A few keys popped off, it was old after all, and I heard a static sound that wouldn’t stop. I stayed out, trying to press down on the keys, but the sound was muted. I got nervous and I fished for my lighter and a cigarette.

\----

I smoke. I smoke because damn, it’s really fucking hard to get over addiction and smoking isn’t as bad as the rest of it. Still bad, I know, but I think my whole body is walking cancer at this point. If I can survive radiation, I can survive some smoke in my lungs. Whatever.

I smoked when I realized I had a crush on a dead man. I smoked when I thought about how both he and my best friend Meena, Sky’s parents, were dead as doornails and weren’t coming back, how they were killed by bad people instead of something peaceful. They both deserve better. Nick deserves better too. It had been a couple days since our brief talk, and I felt awful for all of it. Every single bit of everything I’ve ever done to screw up that family, whether it be not killing those two monsters sooner or not telling Nick the whole truth.

I told Cory this one night, and he didn’t say anything until the end. “You should talk to Nick. I’ll get him to talk to you.” He got up and left before I could protest. God, I feel like a child around him. That shouldn’t happen, I need to be better.

\----

“Heard you liked Sky,” was all Nick said. He was holding the keyboard. “I fixed this. I wanna- I wanna talk.”

“About?” I asked. I was sitting outside and smoking a cigarette, looking at the scenery, thinking about how much of a fuck up I was. I was inwardly ecstatic that Nick was even speaking with me.

“I don’t know.”

I put out my cigarette for his convenience and shrugged at him. “Alright,” was all I managed. Nick sat down. For a while we did just that; we sat outside. We watched the wind blow gently through the trees and the sun sprinkle in from between the leaves, the spots of light moving back and forth as the branches did. Susan was sleeping somewhere far off in a makeshift cave Nick made for her. Nick spoke first.

“I’m sure you and Sky would’ve been a cool couple. Weird though. You’d be kinda like my stepdad,” he laughed and looked at his feet. I let out a breath. “Though I guess you already are pretty much a father figure. You do a lot for me.” He pressed down a key on the keyboard and I turned to look at him.

“You do a lot for me too, Nick. And I feel really bad. Meena was pretty amazing and you are too and I feel like shit because I didn’t give either of you the respect or the time or the love that you-” I stopped, and I tried to take a deep breath. “I love you, Nick. You’re such a good friend.”

Nick smiled, that rare genuine smile that reminds me so much of Meena but at the same time is all his own. Nick held out his arm. “Hug?” he asked, and I hugged him. And then after a couple of precious moments Nick put the piano on my lap and told me to play something. I tried to pull another song from my memory, but Nick must have seen that look on my face, because then he said, “Something special. Something that reminds you of my mom.”

I hesitated for a moment, my hands hovering over the keys. I’d never made anything up before. Nick put a hand on my shoulder. “She was so awesome. She loves you so much, upstairs, I’m sure. I’m sure she somehow found a way to be more proud of you than I am,” I said, and Nick shook me.

“Play, old man,” he said, but I could tell he understood the sentiment. I nodded and laughed and then came up with a little something. It felt natural, like I’d played it my whole life. I played Meena a song, then Nick, then Cory and Uni and Dawn when they all came out to hear the sound. I played one for Tommy Valentine and then Sky and all the hopeless crushes and all the friends that had become family and I played a song for Sam and I played a song for the fallout because damn, where would these guys have been if it never happened?

\----

I hope there’s a heaven, sure, but looking back I realize that this kind of thing is a type of heaven. Being with them, laughing with them, saying dirty jokes with them, playing with them, messing with them, and all the other shit that we did together. So yeah, I hope there’s a heaven, but if there’s not, that’s okay. I had some pretty good times, didn’t I? When it’s my time, I’m sure I’ll know. I kinda can’t wait for Meena’s heavenly punch in the gut.


End file.
